It’s because of women, and the way we treat them. Islamic society is starkly patriarchal. Women are chattel, who belong to their fathers. It’s not uncommon for a young girl to be married off to her paternal uncle, or first cousin. She has no say, no right. Once married, she belongs to her husband. She’s not fully human, to our eyes.
In America, and most of the West, women are free to choose. They decide if, when, and to whom they marry, and they decide how long that marriage will last. American courts universally defer to the mother when custody of children is an issue, and an American man who runs off on his family will be made to pay the price, if he can be found. A lot of American women are sexual provocateurs, and enjoy showing off the flesh. Such behavior in Islam is a death warrant.
I could go on, but it’s self evident. A society is based on families, and the way families are structured affects everything. A rigidly patriarchal family structure produces a rigidly hierarchical government. The Absolute Nuclear Family, ours, produces democracy.
Tacitus, some two thousand years ago, was the first to describe the ANF, as it was practiced by the German tribes he studied. Their descendants, the Anglo-Saxons, brought the ANF with them to Britain. The Normans who came later also brought the ANF structure, which is almost universal in Scandinavia.
So the English who came to Jamestown, and then Plymouth, brought the Absolute Nuclear Family with them, and it is the American way of life we know today. It was perfect for settling a continent, because one of its central features was that a young married couple were expected to provide a home for themselves. They were completely free from any interference from either of their parents. And the parents had no legal obligations to them. They were on their own, legally.
What such a young couple needed was land, and America had a whole lot of that to offer. For generation after generation American women produced eight, ten, twelve, thirteen children, and these children would have eight, ten, twelve children of their own. My direct ancestor, Thomas Pettyjohn II, was a thirteenth child, and seventh son, born after the death of his father. He married a cousin and they had twelve of their own. That’s the old Absolute Nuclear Family in action. And these people spread out all across the country, north and south. From Virginia to Delaware to Ohio to Indiana to South Dakota.
I believe the ANF is responsible for the English success in settling America, as opposed to the French or the Spanish. French and Spanish women refused to come to the New World, so the French and the Spaniards married Native women. But the English women would come, and that made all the difference in the world. And it was the lure of having an Absolute Nuclear Family, and land, all of their own, that brought them to Virginia. Many were mail order brides, given clothes and other necessaries, and free passage to Virginia. They were given a place to stay while they decided which of the numerous young men who sought their hand they would pick. A successful suitor had to pay 120 lbs. of prime tobacco, worth $5,000 today, to reimburse the Virginia Company. They were delighted to pay.
These young women were not required to pick anyone. If they decided not to marry, that was their right. Most did, of course, and these are among the earliest Mothers of America, whose offspring number in the tens of millions.
If I was rich I’d do a movie about one of those ships, bringing a boat load of mail order brides to Virginia in 1618, and what happened to them after they got there. It could be quite romantic, come to think of it.
reaganproject.com 